


Equal Favour

by lulahbelle



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Drunken Confessions, First Time, M/M, Marcus' Roman Propriety, Sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-06 12:23:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulahbelle/pseuds/lulahbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After they return with The Eagle a drunken Marcus says thank you to Esca.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Equal Favour

**Author's Note:**

> -I first put this up aaaages ago (probably about a year ago), then got really self conscious about it, as I often do, and took it down. Now I've looked it over and edited it alot and feel a little happier with it - thank you to those of you who gave kudos to it last time.
> 
> -I am not sure how well the sex goes with the rest, you can well read it without it I think, but you know, porn is always good right?

It is a night at the tavern, awhile after their return, with nectared spirit spreading warmly through their veins and the walls shifting around them, when they first speak of their future.

"Now I am better and you are free, we should decide what we will do with our time," Marcus says.

"We should go to Spain," Esca says quick.

"Spain?"

Esca nods, a smile ghosting his lips, "Someone I friended in the Arena wanted to go there and raise horses. He built great want in me for the thought of it."

"You had a friend in the arena?" Marcus asks surprised.

Esca nods.

"What happened to this man?"

"A guard, killed him, not long before I was bought for you."

Marcus remembers Esca's great despair the day they met with sorrow but Esca shrugs off his concern, his gaze acute for only a second before he continues.

"He said there was great money and adventure to be had in Spain. Such a trip would do well for our time and our fortunes."

"I've been told that of Spain too," Marcus says, remembering how soldiers would sometimes talk of the place as a pleasant plan for their retirement in the event that they lived to reach it.

"Well that settles it then," Esca says, happy, as if there could be no further objection or pertinent fact.

"Horses?" Marcus says with a laugh, unable to quite take the suggestion seriously.

Esca simply nods, as enthusiastic as before.

"I couldn't breed horses now Esca, Rome's eyes are upon me, I would be expected to go there, take a wife, have a family, do something in service of the Empire."

"And is that what you would expect from yourself?"

That Marcus' answer is no they both know enough from his silence.

"But horses Esca?" Marcus says, the plan is too fun and fantastical to be fitting.

"Why not?" Esca says to him, his addled smirk so sweet and free.

Marcus stares at it and feels his friend's sure hope infecting him.

When he next speaks it is as much to remind himself as it is Esca.

"I am the son of Aquila, a rescuer of the Eagle, it would be indecent for me to do something like that."

Esca's continued smile and shake of the head tell Marcus that he finds his ideas laughable even as he treasures him.

"And was it decency in the eyes of others that sent you over that Wall into Caledonia? Did you not hear everyone say, every hour how insane it was? And did you not make triumph of it?"

Esca pauses, to let Marcus truly see where a little self belief could lead.

"You are a man Marcus. You can do whatever you wish, you must just decide it and follow forth."

The sheer goodness of his optimism weakens the Marcus' disapproval. He begins to think that maybe they could, that they should.

Laughing at himself he shakes his head and repeats in disbelief, "Horses?"

"I believe you could work yourself well to it," Esca says happy that he has convinced him.

Marcus feels good, filled with Esca's positive spirit.

"I thank you for your faith in me," he says, settling his eyes gravely at Esca, giving his gratitude seriously.

"It's no hardship," Esca says, laughing, clearly considering Marcus' sudden formality to be a symptom of his drunkness.

When Marcus sees that his comment hasn't landed with the desired weight he looks to Esca again and insists.

"No truly Esca. I thank the Gods every evening for our meeting. I am more thankful to you than to any other soul alive beside my Uncle."

It is a heavy confession, voiced low, so helplessly true that the words shook him.

Esca's smile fades off a little. He grips Marcus' sight hard with his own and gives back, "As I have thanked my Gods for you."

Both of their mouths spill to helpless smiles at that and they spend the next moment with eyes locked, sharing joy in one another.

Feeling under pressure to cement the emotion with words Marcus turns eyes down to the table and says, "Well we are together still, so whatever we may have done to deserve it we have both been favoured."

When he flicks a look up he finds himself watched. Esca looks different, his gaze heated and searching.

Marcus has desired Esca from his very first sight and been waiting for him to beckon for just as long.

Pulled on into this moment by the vine in his veins, awkwardly hopeful, Marcus settles a heavy hand on Esca's shoulder.

Touching Esca, finally having a deliberate hold of him, swells a great satisfaction in his belly. In the thrall of this feeling, that swarms sweetly all through him. He squeezes, then shifts nearer, extending his arm further to lay over the line of his shoulder, hand clutching high around his neck, until they are joined in an uncomfortable hug.

His contentment grows and he stills, unable to find any further forward momentum.

Esca stays under his arm and turns his face to him, smiling with a hint of the mocking of before.

"Are you trying to wring my neck? Because I think it's done with a bit more tightness and a bit lower down if you mean to do the job right." Esca says merry.

Embarrassed, with a laugh, shaking his head, Marcus says at that, "I'm sorry friend, I'm just..."

"...drunk?" Esca finishes with bright affection.

The pleased tone to his voice and his eyes, intense on his, so dark with drink, keep Marcus from drawing his arm away as he nods heavily.

Esca laughs, "I as well, it's ok, I shouldn't think we're the only ones in here."

Marcus feels almost nothing to still clutch at him, so accepted that he accepts himself, but then Esca remarks, in a shush, "You're really clinging to me, almost as if you half expect I would get up and leave if you did not."

Though his comment is clearly fond, it reminds Marcus. He hears judgement in it and easily reflects badly on himself.

He is behaving shamefully he thinks, like a small, unsure child with it's nurse. It is unmanly, improper. He will not allow himself it. At once he withdraws his arm.

Esca catches his guilty way and asks, drunkenly direct, "Do you think I am going to go from you at some point?"

Marcus looks, unsure what to say, for he does not feel as hale and hearty about the prospect of Esca living independently as he should. In all truth he does not want Esca to go from his side at all and the neediness his spirit has for his presence bothers him. Need is not something a man is meant to feel, certainly not for another man and if he must then certainly not toward an equal as Esca now was. He is quiet for shame.

All the same he can feel Esca asking him, without a word, to speak freely. The look in his eyes coaxing the smallest, rawest, most disowned parts of his being out of hiding, promising them a warm and kind shelter in his heart.

"Well I imagine you'll want your own life eventually," Marcus says reasonably.

Understanding his defensive calm all too well, Esca gives a considering look and asks, "So you did not listen when I swore to you my life was yours?"

"You've no need to stay fixed to me in gratitude Esca. That's as much enslavement as that which claimed you before. If I think of you going off alone someday then it ought to be with the knowledge in my heart that you should."

Esca shakes his head, face seizing tight, reclaiming some of its once ago+ fierceness and sorrow, "No," he says, "No. I could not leave you and it's not gratitude keeping me, just that I feel for you as I would toward kin."

Marcus' heart leaps hopeful at the loyalty and devotion he hears in his voice but he maintains his usual cold, stoic self as he says, "Well we've been through alot together Esca, we are brothers."

"Yes," Esca says, then he pauses, puzzled by his need to speak on, thinking, before he continues, "But I think I felt that way always. It may not have been the first thought I had toward you but it made itself known soon after."

Marcus huffs a relieved laugh at how perfectly these words echoed the pitch of his own confused thoughts toward Esca at the time of their meeting and ever since.

"I also," he says.

Esca smiles so softly that his face is transformed.

Having both given the truth of their souls to one another, with pleasure at what they've heard, they both rest in a settled silence.

To Marcus their interaction winds down to the pulse of intense fulfilment he only feels when he has a hand on Esca, or a thought of touching him.

He wonders if their touch could be free as their good feeling, what that level of peace between them would be like.

Feeling freer, drunker than before, Marcus touches Esca's forearm.

He smirks pretending it some game and a curve comes to Esca's lips. Pleased Marcus rubs his fingertips against him.

Gratification fills him again, a low and basic rumble of contentment.

That Esca sits and lets Marcus do this gives him childish, foolish thoughts of being allowed further, to place his fingertips on his face perhaps, his lips, maybe to put their lips together, to open his mouth against him. An image of doing this, of tasting him, bursts hot and wild in Marcus' head. It seems a possibility both fearful and joyous.

Esca looks up at him, seeking, "Marcus?"

In the grip of a need that confuses him, tight with uncomfortable want and bathed in the possibility of mercy and empathy shining from Esca's eyes, Marcus blurts out, "I want to touch you,"

"What?" Esca says. His eyes hold an emotion that Marcus cannot find but presumes is disgust.

He cannot bear to repeat himself.

Instead, wincing at the unfamiliar taste of desire on his lips, he sits up straight, breaking the contact between their bodies. Then, breathing steadily against his excitement, squashing it back down to where it can be safely ignored, he says, "I'm sorry I should not have just said that."

Esca grips his wrist, his jaw and lips turning to a stern jut, "Is touching me truly what you want?"

Marcus burns with the humiliation of himself and his basic weakness.

If left in charge of battling men, where he had expectation, a role, a code to guide his behaviour, he could well hold himself inward as he should, but in all serious matters related to himself and the world of companionship all it took was wine and the slightest affection from another before he unravelled.

He was so much lesser for that.

"Marcus," Esca pleads, his eyes hard, burning into him, unwilling to let him go without some answer, his fingertips digging sharp into the sinews at his wrist, trying to force response through hurt.

Marcus enjoys Esca gripping him, even in pain and shame, and he lingers in it, silent, still, with a large want for more.

He realises that the silence has extended to an unjustified length. Unable to meet Esca's eyes, or take any of his fierce face which he would swell full to worship with kisses and attempt a cowardly, unconvincing lie, he says the only thing he can say, pitiable and contemptible as it may be.

"Yes."

There. He has let himself back out again, just moments after swearing to himself that he would never, ever think to do it again.

No good Roman man found himself here.

He drops his head confused and cold.

Esca puts his hand on Marcus' chest and when he knows Marcus looks to him he smiles, then his eyes do a tipsy sweep of Marcus' face, returning to his mouth, as if he is contemplating the same acts Marcus was but moments previous. Marcus' breath quickens automatically in anticipation. Bindly Esca puts down an assured, clutching hand to the span of Marcus' thigh, then, staring into his eyes, with a nod of the head down he says.

"You would like this?"

A surge of blood pushes up Marcus' cock, his breath shallows, his cheeks burn, he nods.

"I know well I should not," he says, excusing himself, with desperate apology for causing disgrace, even though it is clear that Esca, who at his word slides that hand, stroking, up his thigh, until it is inches from outrightly gripping his sex, couldn't be less offended.

"You like it?" Esca says low and breathy, his smile a sly spark that disappears instantly, replaced by an intense stare.

Marcus nods as he gives over, helpless, "I am made excited by it."

He wants to bite his own lips for the indignity of letting such an admission escape them.

Esca nods and smiles excessively kind and says, "Well we must be favoured by all the Gods for we are with one another still."

 

******

 

They are especially glad then that they are in a premises of ill repute, for it enables them to be in the midst of drunken, passionate kisses in such a short time that neither is allowed the respite to reconsider what they do.

When they break apart from exploring one another's wet mouths, gasping for breath, Esca doesn't pause, at once reaching rough hands out to wrench Marcus' tunic up and over his head.

Stripped of it, left half naked and in such intensely base, bodily need that he is mindless for exactly how he might reasonably satisfy it, Marcus edges back towards the bed.

Eyes fixed to his retreat with molten intent, Esca takes off his own tunic as he moves towards him, hands slipping down to pull his braccae ties open fast and aggressive.

Watching him Marcus shifts back to lean against the wall, where despite his awareness of how wanton he must already look, the sight of Esca's action stirs him so deeply that he has to massage himself through his braccae.

Esca's eyes flick down with real concentrated heat on the movement of his hand.

As Esca kneels on the mattress at the bed's end, by Marcus' feet, his gaze slowly slips up his legs to his thighs, then his bare chest, which his eyes roam across slowly, as his lips quirk subtly with a smile, like a man impressed by the acreage of his land.

"So powerful. Few men I've seen were ever as you are," Esca whispers, his hand reaching to his foot to untie then remove his sandals, just as he once had when a slave, except that this time in between each few moves on the foot he leans down to kiss Marcus' shin.

It is all only silly flattery but Marcus feels flushed at the attention. His cock twinges and he closes his eyes, to shiver and sigh as Esca crawls closer to lean over him.

Behind his eyes, in the darkness of his own mind Marcus imagines for a good second how awful he must look, swooning, relaxed back, to be taken like some woman or boy, but these thoughts dissolve before the sensation of Esca's mouth, hot on his flesh, trailing down from his throat to his chest, to lick that area already worshiped by sight and comment.

He laps soft at Marcus' nipple for a second, then, leaving him desperate, raises his head and plants a kiss on his lips so swift and forceful that it is like they fight. Esca growls in the midst, hands pulling Marcus' hair until he shudders into his mouth.

When they break apart Marcus has to palm his cock again, soothing it, its throbbing need growing quite sharply painful.

Esca nods his head down at it and shakes his head smiling with savage arrogance.

"It is so proud at the thought of me," Esca says husky as he puts a hand to work his own cock.

Shivering with unsure delight and foolish courage Marcus finds he is curious about Esca's part and puts his hands inside his open covering. Esca closes his eyes and sighs as Marcus draws him out. It is a nice sight, short and thick, as hard as Marcus', warm to the touch. Marcus moves in, settling his fist around it, stroking slow up and down, turning to a squeezing at the end of a stroke as he likes. It spurs Esca to lean in and kiss into his cheek affectionate, then wild, licking over his neck as he thrusts his hip into Marcus' waiting grip.

Then, with a stroke over Marcus' bulge, he whispers into his ear.

"I know of your people's shame. If I place my lips here will you groan and buck me off telling me what a disgusting thing I am, or will you be of sense and buck and groan because I will do this disgusting thing for you."

"You may do whatever you want to me. My gratitude is more than words could give to you."

Esca fails to hear his noble intention, eyes gleaming as he repeats, "Whatever I want?"

Marcus gets a small jolt of fear at the very devious way Esca seems to have taken his words, but has scarce time to react to it before Esca is down, holding one hand to his hip, the other to his cock as he sucks it into his mouth.

He draws his rose hewn lips tight around the head as he tugs the rest of its length in his hand, then slowly sinks down, bobbing up, then on it again, eyes gently closed like he is having the sweetest dream.

That the person so lost to enjoyment at this seedy act is Esca, who no shame or weakness touches, who is so noble and loyal. Beautiful.

A sharp twist of lust seizes Marcus's body into arching shivers and he has to close his own eyes for the glorious obscenity of him.

Marcus knows that if Esca goes on pleasuring him like this he will lose all control of himself.

He tries to fight, to keep himself off, panting long, lost and helpless but Esca gives it to him so perfectly, motion ragged, moaning. Marcus makes the most desperate succession of ohs at that, then gulps a please, like he might be asking for mercy and then more words that mean yes and more and then there is no worry left for him, just heavy breath and flaring pleasure like incessant lit torches behind his eyes.

He goes limp, moaning and stroking hands lost to exploring Esca's hair, precious neck, shoulders and back.

Esca comes up close to him, breathing hard and smiling. His hair is stuck up a little where Marcus has been unconsciously wrenching it.

Marcus almost thanks him once more but Esca kisses and the need for words fades away.

Esca's thighs rise to sink either side of Marcus' body, enclosing it between as he stabs his hips up against him to rub their cocks together.

The pain of Esca's hip bones clashing his for his hard thrusts aches dull, as the pleasure friction burns between his legs burns.

He looks direct into Marcus' soul, eyes heavy on his, his movements all downwards now, grinding his cock slow and hard into the pleasure spot on Marcus', then begs, panting and hurt.

"Please, I want you."

Marcus grunts, hard hit by orgasm, almost sad, as he spurts up, liberally, over Esca's guided cock.

When his head returns to the room, his breath heavy, Esca on knees above him, is a sight, he has smoothed the come on his hands over his own prick which he strips hard.

"Come let me," Marcus says, snaking fingers up sneaky into Esca's rigid grip on himself.

Esca is all weakness in his sighs and sad eyes, sobbing as he lets Marcus take over his fisting, there is real strange tension in his brow that lifts Marcus' mouth to meet his automatically, their tongues tangle and it isn't long before Esca comes in quick warm splashes all over his stomach.

To have such sordidness upon him in that large second and find no chastisement in it's wake is as odd to Marcus as it is welcomed.

"We will do that again the second we wake," Esca says.

His eyes are so light and happy. Marcus wants to pin him down instantly and rut in his belly until those eyes are dark again but he can barely even move let alone hold down the struggle his friend would likely give to his dominance.

"The very second I have the slightest rememberance of how to work my limbs," he says.

"If I am not awake feel free to begin without me. Because I intend to begin without you," Esca says.

As Marcus realises the excitement this threat gives him Esca says, "Just think how many times we may have like that out under Spain's warmth."


End file.
